People choose destinations for all sorts of reasons — beaches, museums, theme parks, gastronomy, scenic wonders, old castles ... whatever. We had one overriding reason for picking the Mayenne. It was flat. Flat and in France. Perfect, we thought, for our first family cycling holiday to foreign parts. Our first family cycling holiday to any parts, come to that.
There are an extraordinary number of companies offering cycling packages (see below). They cover the full gamut, from those aimed at people who feel sore just looking at a saddle to addicts who could ride blindfold on a tightrope across the Grand Canyon and never even dampen their Lycras. We — two grown-ups and three kids aged 15, 12 and 5 — went for one arranged through the aptly named Cycling for Softies. Along with our tickets and hotel vouchers, they also sent us sound advice on how to prevent sore bottoms (two pairs of undies and lots of talc, since you ask).
The Mayenne, roughly in the middle of a triangle formed by Brittany, Normandy and the Loire, was where Softies first set up shop some 25 years ago. It lives up to the promise of easy terrain, although it is more bumpy than flat, puffed up like an air bed and woven with a cat’s cradle of roads. Those roads vary tremendously; on the Mayenne map, the traffic scale goes from blue autoroutes, through red and brown roads to yellow lanes and white tracks. We spent most of our time on the white, with occasional adventurous forays onto yellow. All along, drivers gave us a wide berth — after a while, we didn’t know whether to be grateful or take it personally.
Rather than pick a Super Softie tour, based at a single hotel (soft going on squishy, we thought), we went for the Gentle Tourer, a notch up the challenge scale, involving stays at three different hotels, with the option of outings on the in- between days.
Day one was a warm-up — a round trip out and back from our base hotel, the Du Commerce in Vaiges. Paul, Cycling for Softies’s man on the spot, filled us in on everything from panniers to puncture repairs, and gears (six on each bike) to gradients (“You can always get off”). We loaded up a picnic and set off on the 18-mile trip, whimsically whistling the theme tune from Jules et Jim. Our halfway goal was the hilltop town of Sainte-Suzanne, a place of ramparts, a castle and very good cakes. The latter were rewards after huffing and puffing our way up the steep gradient into town.
Softie is not an image I usually embrace, but, I confess, I was thoroughly pooped by the end of the day. I blame the boy. Having decided that our five-year-old, who has only recently graduated from the wobble-without-stabilisers cycling stage, ought to ride on an attached “tag-along” or trailer bike, we were really five people on just four bikes.
The tag-along did have its own pedals, but pedal he didn’t. He spent most of his bike time assassinating passing French folk with pistol fingers and broadcasting a shrill Maxwell’s Silver Hammer across the horizon to an audience of creamy-white cows. He also wanted to stop a lot, because he was hot/cold/hungry/thirsty/tired/bored or needed a wee. Cycling may well imply low-impact on the environment, but it can prove remarkably high-impact on the old man at the front of a tag-along.
Just like New York City, the Mayenne has an apple as its logo. Unlike New York, the Mayenne is a place where they actually grow: this is cider and calvados country. Our tiny pocket of rural France was a patchwork of orchards and smallholdings alternating with big field spreads of wheat, peas and maize. There were plenty of forests, too, the occasional inky-black river shrouded in willows and — perfect for picnics — little lakes called plans d’eau. Maybe we took too many breaks, but we did not make it as far as the big River Mayenne; a shame, since you can ride for miles along its towpath.
Sainte-Suzanne — topped in our book by the Roman town Jublains (baths, fortress, theatre and museum) — stood out, but there were other highlights: the delightful market town of Evron, for example, which felt like a full-on metropolis after hours easing through country calm; and the grotto and 7th-century chapel at Saulges. But with our limited daily mileage, this was nothing like a motoring holiday where you scoop up attractions like a whale downing plankton; on the contrary, our pace was slower and our destinations more spread out. Highlights came sparingly, and were all the better for it.
The holiday, despite early rain, got a family forest of thumbs up. It was a mini-adventure, soft like it said on the tin, but very out-and-about and active — and, most days, surrounded by an utter green peace. And I lost a couple of pounds, which, in France, has to be merveilleux.
Travel details: David Wickers and family travelled as guests of Cycling for Softies (0161 248 8282, www.cycling-for-softies.co.uk). The company arranges independent tailor-made cycling holidays that include the bikes — Dawes lightweight six-speed tourers — and pre-booked accommodation in 10 different regions in France.
A week in the Mayenne, excluding travel from the UK, costs from £733pp (less £15 a night for children under 15). They travelled to the Mayenne by Eurostar/TGV/taxi, which would add £198pp (£151 for under 12s), all bookable through Cycling for Softies. You can start on any day, stay for any duration in any hotel and choose either a tour — travelling from hotel to hotel — or a stay-put holiday.
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